Winter cover crops on corn and soybean acres are a natural fit for crop-and-beef farms.

Cover crops offer beef profit potential for the time between fall crop harvest and spring planting, says Rob Kallenbach. He gave his ideas in an interview before taking part in a three-state series of beef meetings.

He speaks Wednesday evening, Jan. 15, at the University of Missouri Hundley-Whaley Center, Albany.

Wheat offers an added benefit of a grain crop, if grazing livestock is removed early. "There will be little loss of wheat-yield potential," Kallenbach said.

"Rye doesn’t offer much demand as a cereal crop, but it offers more grazing than wheat."

Oats offer grazing, and easy transition to spring crop planting as the cereal winterkills. There’s no herbicide expense next spring.

Legumes add nitrogen to the soil and protein to the grazing mix. However, they are slow starters and add little fall grazing.

Brassicas—turnips or grazing radishes—make excellent feed. Cattle like them so much they can overeat, causing bloat. They do well when mixed with grasses to dilute the diet, or when strip grazing is used to control eating hours.

Cover crops added to a cropping system complicate management. The crops must be seeded early enough to get a good start on growth before winter.

That may mean aerial seeding into soybeans before leaf drop, for example.

Then there is timing of ending grazing and killing the forage crop before spring crop planting. It works. It just takes close timing, which may be delayed by weather.